


What we are given

by honeybadgerwrath



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: 2018 Summer Solstice Gift Exchange, F/M, Gen, Romance, Sharing a Bed, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-22
Updated: 2018-06-22
Packaged: 2019-05-26 16:48:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15005156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honeybadgerwrath/pseuds/honeybadgerwrath
Summary: What should be straight-forward always gets a little more complicated when feelings are involved. Sharing a bed on a mission, for example.





	What we are given

**Author's Note:**

  * For [roadhymns](https://archiveofourown.org/users/roadhymns/gifts).



The mattress beneath him is too soft. Gives too much under him, dips too much with every shift of his weight. Every attempt to make himself more comfortable or, if it were at all possible, to take up less space on the already too narrow bed.

He considers the possibility of foregoing sleep entirely. He has done worse than do without sleep for a night, although if he were somehow able to make it out of the bed and perhaps even out the door of the room—

The huff of breath from beside him is not a dainty or gentle sound, but one filled with annoyance and exhaustion. “Illya.” He almost smiles at the fact that Gaby, half-muffled by the pillow she’s pressed her face into and voice thick with sleep, still manages to make his name sound more like a curse than a proper noun. When she speaks further, it’s in German, the hard edges of the language slurred by the late hour, the throatiness gone rampant as he imagines she focuses on resisting the urge to kick him. _”Go to sleep. You wrestling imaginary bears doesn’t make it any easier for me to get any sleep, and at least one of us has to go snooping around tomorrow.”_

“ _I am not wrestling imaginary bears,_ ” he says, automatically. It is in the same language, but even he can hear the difference between the dialect he learned during training and the one she grew up speaking. Only the kick of his own embarrassment keeps him from complaining about the bed. Again. His embarrassment, her earlier threat to call in Solo as a replacement if he insisted the conditions were so terrible as her partner.

The darkness allows an intimacy that is unexpected. Allows his mouth to run away from him as he confesses, “ _I have not done this before.”_

He hears as well as feels her stir beside him, and the realization of that is as unnerving as the warmth of her across the narrow space between them. Her voice is warm with amusement through the haze of her sleepiness when she tells him “ _Sex?_ ”

That same darkness hides the rise of color he wears at the mention, his embarrassment two-fold before he can correct her. “ _Not sex. We are not—”_ His words cut off with the sound of her laughter, warm and amused, and where he might otherwise feel his temper begin to heat at being teased...it is Gaby, and he knows there’s more fondness in her teasing than he is used to. _”Sharing a bed._ ”

Her laughter quiets, and the situation they are in settles over them both. A mission deemed simple and quick enough to require only two of their number. Their cover, the now-familiar one of being lovers. Once more a single room assigned to them in the maintenance of said cover, although this time, smaller and holding only a single bed for them to share. He had offered to take the floor, leaving the bed to her. 

He still remembered the shock of the moment she had thrown the pillow across the room and hit him in the back of the head. As he would always remember her expression when he had turned, how her own surprise had melted into laughter, and she had called him ridiculous before ordering him to get into bed with her and ‘stop being so damned Russian.’ 

_“Here,”_ she murmurs, this time the word comes in Russian. The language is not entirely at home on her tongue, but his heart clenches at the effort of using it all the same. He feels her twist around, reaching over him to grab his opposite arm. Feels her fingers wrap around his wrist and the gentle insistence of her tugging him with her as she turns onto her side. 

She wraps herself in his arm, folding him around her and edging back onto the bed until she lies with her body fitted into the curve of his. For a moment he cannot breathe, she is so close, and he is afraid that one, wrong move, and she will abandon the gesture for the far edge of the bed again. 

And then he breathes. 

Relaxes. 

Tugs her that last little bit against him. 

_”Go to sleep, Illya._ ” 

He does. 


End file.
